Category: The Diplomat

Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the most interesting regions to follow in terms of the Chinese global presence. When China stepped up its engagement with the region via its 16+1 initiative in 2012, the debate in Europe soon after started to revolve around the notion of the region serving as a “Trojan horse” for China to enter the continent. Recently, the discourse has changed significantly, with many pointing to Lithuania and Czechia as the most hawkish European countries on China and representing a souring of the region’s…

For two years Chinese authorities secretly detained the newborn baby, her siblings, and their parents.  Their whereabouts and wellbeing remained unknown to family members or lawyers until word began to trickle out in July 2022: the baby and her sister, then 6 years old, had been kept in a psychiatric hospital since October 2020. Their brother, who turned 8 that year, had been sent, without the parents’ consent, to be fostered by a local police informant.  The children’s mother, human rights defender He Fangmei, had been detained at the psychiatric…

The need to alleviate the strain of great-power competition and navigate uncertainties in international politics has prompted many countries to broaden their partnerships and establish new avenues of cooperation. Taiwan is no exception.  Since the official launch of the New Southbound Policy (NSP) in 2016, the Tsai Ing-wen administration has made great strides to strengthen the cultural, diplomatic, and economic ties between Taiwan and 18 of its southern neighbors, encompassing ASEAN countries, South Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Economic collaboration, talent exchange, people-to-people ties, and resource sharing are the backbone…

If there is one area where Argentina’s President Javier Milei cannot be faulted, it is the coherence and consistency of his libertarian ideas since he started his political career. As expected, Milei also brought that ideology to foreign policy. Milei understands the world in a binary way, with an ideological perspective typical of the Cold War. It’s a world that ceased to exist in 1989, but which is still very much alive for Milei. It’s an almost existential need for him, given his deep ideological convictions. In that sense, aggressively…

China’s policymakers have long grappled with a data and cybersecurity policy conundrum: how to balance government control without torpedoing business sentiment. To date, the pro-control camp has prevailed, ensuring that China’s policymakers treat its cyberspace as comparable to physical territory, with increasingly restrictive controls as (perceived) data risk to national security increases. At the same time, policymakers have touted the power of data as a new engine of economic growth.  This muddled approach – presenting data as both a needed means of economic development and something that must be reviewed…

As U.S. President Joe Biden hosts Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio for a state visit, and prepares for a historic trilateral summit also including the Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., China is emphasizing its own partnerships. On April 8, the same day Kishida arrived in Washington, D.C., Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov began a two-day trip to Beijing. On April 11, the same day Biden, Kishida, and Marcos will gather at the White House, China is sending its third-ranking leader to North Korea. Despite China’s consistent claims that the China-Russia…

Chinese President Xi Jinping and former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou met on April 10 at 4 p.m. at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.  Earlier media reports suggested that Ma and Xi would meet on April 8. It has been speculated that the original date of the meeting was changed so that Ma and Xi would meet on the same day as a summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, who is in Washington, D.C. on a state visit. Spokespeople for the Chinese…

Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Tuesday in a sign of mutual support and shared opposition to Western democracies amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “We would like to express our highest appreciation and admiration for the successes that you have achieved over the years and, above all, over the last decade under your leadership,” Lavrov told Xi, according to Russian media. “We are sincerely pleased with these successes, since these are the successes of friends, although not everyone in the world shares this attitude and…

April 3 began as a typical day for the people of Taiwan. Workers and students set out on their usual commutes as cities across the island bustled with the usual activities of daily life. At 7:58 a.m. local time, during the peak of morning rush hour, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the east coast of Taiwan, marking the most significant seismic event in nearly 25 years.    To put the size of this earthquake into context, a magnitude 7 earthquake has been described by seismologists as having the “energy equivalent to…

A bipartisan consensus in the U.S. House of Representatives culminated in the passage of legislation in that, if also passed by the Senate and signed into law by the president, would require the Beijing-based company, ByteDance, to either divest from its U.S.-based subsidiary – TikTok – or have it be removed from the U.S. market in six months.  U.S. lawmakers see TikTok as being intimately linked to Beijing, “a foreign adversary” that “poses the greatest national security threat of our time.”  The latest build-up in tension started in 2019 in…